It all comes back to the landscape.

I consider my pictures as sort of landscapes!

The “landscape” has become a turning point for most of my work – a matrix through which intentions form and expresses themselves.

I distinguish between nature and culture reference – culture here understood as what is manmade. Some pictures can be considered nature landscapes others as culturel/cityscapes, even colour combinations…

It is surprising to witch extend  it is possible to introduce and bring together different components into a picture, without it becoming wrong or disturbing, painting is in this respect a wonderful and broad art form!

That I view landscape as a uniting concept in relation to painting is probably due to my love and interest in figurative landscape painting. I have practised this discipline parallel to the non-figurative work. Love for landscape and nature as such is an inexhaustible source of inspiration and energy into the non-figurative work.

The interest in the “picturesque” motive has also led to an interest in photography. The motive becomes a carrier of atmosphere and at its best a mirror of spiritual and mental dimensions, longings of the heart…

A good picture offers some point of transcendence, a place to get out, a point from where you can leap into a different level.

It is an interesting thought that all mental constructions - conceptions and thoughts - could be viewed as landscapes/mindscapes...

As one can take refuge in nature and be nurtured, painting and art as such likewise offers refuge, - to some extend it is a search for truth, an attempt to respond or find/formulate answers, solutions.

 It’s been said that “art is the truth about facts”.

To me painting is connected with a great sense of freedom, an area where you don’t have to follow any conventions but can set your own rules.

Art could be seen as one of the last resorts/areas that promise some kind of incorruptibility and inviolability, though it is threatened by this time of great hunger for entertainment and even authenticity and substance. Authenticity has become merchandise in it self, something everybody wants to claim and consume, - art easily becomes a hostage or prostitute, and vanity easily takes the lead.

After all - the artist is not worthy of high priesthood or prophetic status…but neither is he merely an entertainer.

If modernisms project was to somehow reunite a fragmented world now God was dead, it didn’t succeed.

 The post-modern world suffers from “white obscenity” (Baudriard), the great tales of old have been inflated, no more marrow in the bone, and everybody is eager for more. Like hungry ghosts wee feed on petty full television and bad movies, still lacking and longing for a deeper connection with our true nature…    

When mythology becomes entertainment it easily looses its spell and power, when we loose track of roots, history and tradition we become emptier.

Pictorial art today

Pictorial art – especially painting - seems like an art form that more than any other has been able to withstand, survive and even enrich itself from the constant demand for renewal that modernism imposed. Pictorial language can be stretched, twisted, broken down, condemned dead and continuously resurrect and remain giving and relevant.

With some justification it was theoretically claimed that painting was outplayed and dead as a relevant form of art, especially so if one considers art history as a strictly linear progressive and evolutionary process of development, where art and quality criteria tends to be regarded as synonymous with the not yet seen and tried.

Minimalism would take away any superfluous hanky-panky, - in its endeavour towards clarity and transcendence it would end up with monochrome painting – still a big thing some places – but painting would end there, - but it didn’t!

Concept art really brought fresh air and liberation - partly from “object obsession” (art-object in a gallery), but as much as it strengthened and renewed sculpture and led to installation art it just consolidated the death penalty given to painting. Painting was for many years out shamed and still are in certain circles.

Language and painting

Primarily painting should be seen and not talked about and it easily becomes banal when speaking on painting, with chance of uttering only the obvious – but that ought not to prevent painters from formulation and reflection.

Painting as a nonverbal branch of art - basically non-epic in its expression, shouldn’t necessarily leave the painter mute!

  Painting and art in general is in itself a kind of science of language, a field where pictorial language is constantly being reflected upon, undergoing change, being reinvented and is not only seen as a means to tell something but often becomes the tale itself, (an end unto itself); - this is a situation where intention and craftsmanship form a synthesis.

Art/painting is a place where one can convey dreams, vision, longing, soul – as well as the pain and darkness one experiences in the world together with the anger it brings about. It is here that art can become political in “the good way”. One should be careful though reducing art as a means to a course or burden it by a demand for “message”; it rarely becomes better or more interesting on a deeper level, as most massages soon seem simplistic and put-on.

A piece of art/painting should have something at heart and at best bleed a little, something should be at stake, if not elsewhere then internally in the inner dialogue of the work, an inner necessity preferably ought to shine through!

To paint nonfigurative is a little like talking in riddles, not sure to be understood, but the painter should not underestimate his audience.

It is my impression, that a broader audience is now beginning to accept and feel more at home with non-figurative painting, but still lot of people prefers pictures with figurative content.

A lot of art still is elitist, perhaps it will have to be like this, as art is not just something which should amuse and entertain, but demands some engagement and effort on behalf of the spectator, but in turn offers an opportunity to grow.  Where art was earlier purely for the upper-class and bourgeoisie, things have changed - at least a little - for the better.

Painting is one of the most liberated domains in our time!